


Never Gonna Keep Me Down

by InsaneTrollLogic



Series: Reverse Robins [5]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Character Study, Damian Wayne is Nightwing, Damian Wayne is Robin, Gen, Jason Todd is Robin, Reverse Robins, Stephanie Brown is Batgirl, Stephanie Brown is Robin, Stephanie Brown is Spoiler, Tim Drake is Red Hood, Tim Drake is Robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-01-16 17:10:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18525946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: Stephanie Brown gets back up again (and again and again)[Stephanie Brown in a Reverse!Robins universe]





	1. Spoiler

**Author's Note:**

> I'm nervous about this one, guys. It's only lightly beta'd, but I'm scared I'm gonna chicken out because I haven't read enough Stephanie to write a Stephanie character piece. SO HERE, ENJOY BEFORE I LOSE MY NERVE.

 It’s years before Stephanie realizes she’s the last person to see Robin 1.0 before he leaves Gotham. In her defense, it’s favorite memory. She’s tearing her way up a fire escape, losing ground as her dad’s henchman’s longer strides carry him farther and farther away.

Robin swoops in to cut him off, landing with a boot squarely in the middle of his chest. The henchman tips backwards, air audibly whooshing from his lungs as he hits the floor. Robin steps casually off his stomach and kicks him once in the head.

The kick is precise, likely delivered with the exact right amount of force to render him unconscious without lasting effects.

Stephanie hits the top of the fire escape just as Robin pulls a zip tie from his belt.

“I had him,” she says, out of breath.

Robin turns to look at her. And while she’s seen Robin before—hard not to catch a few glimpses when you grow up in Lower Gotham—this is the first time she’s been close enough to pick up details.

He’s younger than Stephanie expected. A year or two older than her at most. Which, considering he’s been on the streets for the better part of the last decade means he probably started as a vigilante when he was _ten_. His angular features are half-hidden by his hood and a domino covers the space around his eyes. He has a sharp chin, defined cheek bones and a perpetual scowl. Even in the darkness, Stephanie can tell his skin is littered with faded scars.

His scowl breaks when he takes in her costume, his head tilting sideways in assessment.

“What are you supposed to be?” he demands in an accent that Stephanie doesn’t recognize.

She consciously has to pull her arms out of her defensive stance. “Spoiler.”

“ _Spoiler_ ,” he repeats with a note of derision in his voice.

Stephanie, who’s never been good at thinking things through, picks up a loose brick from and hurls it at him.

Robin sidesteps it easily, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“If you’re laughing at me, I will kick your ass,” Stephanie says, drawing her fists up. “I don’t care if you’re Robin or not.”

“You’re embarrassing yourself.” Despite everything, he doesn’t sound condescending. “Knowing your limits is half the battle.”

Stephanie rocks for a second on her heels and then lowers her fists and gestures to the henchman. “I needed him conscious so I could question him, you ass.”

Robin shrugs. “So wait for him to wake up. Shouldn’t be more than an hour.”

“What, you haven’t got it down to the precise second?”

A blank stare. “That would require knowledge of both this man’s identity and medical history. I assume you’re more up to date.”

Stephanie… actually is more up to date. Raymond Michaels, who she’d tracked down when her mother foolishly left her alone with her hospital login up on the computer. She’d pulled up admissions records for a day where she knew Dad’s men had been involved in a shootout and cross-referenced bullet wounds. Her hunch played out.

“Great,” she says. “So you’ll let me take it from here.”

He draws himself up like he’s about to argue, but seems to think better of it. After a second’s pause, he unhooks a contraption from his belt and hands it to her.

Stephanie looks down, suspecting some kind of trick.

“It’s a grappling gun,” Robin says. “So you cease losing your perps.”

 _Fuck you, too, Robin,_ Stephanie starts to stay, but bites it back. After all, most of the clues she’d left the police were supposed to get some _attention_ from people like Batman and Robin. She wanted Dad in jail before he did something really bad. Robin showing up is a good thing.

And she really, really wants to keep the grappling gun.

Stephanie turns it over in her hands. It’s a good deal sleeker than any of the stuff she’s managed to cobble together. “You don’t need it?”

“Not nearly so much as you,” Robin replies, moving past her. He pauses at the ledge and looks over his shoulder, the hood casting shadows over his face. “There’s a gym on third street, tell them Robin sent you. You need all the help you can get.”

* * *

The case against her dad mounts over the next few days, she leaves the GCPD the information she gleaned from Michaels. When she stakes out the job, she gets a front row seat to Batman putting her Dad back in jail. No Robin today. And Stephanie hates that she’s _looking_ for that cocky bastard.

And with Dad back in prison, the job’s over. It leaves a cold place in her chest. Mom’s worried about her, but she’s misdiagnosed the problem. Stephanie’s not upset over Dad. She’s spending nights staring at the costume under her bed, watching the streets out her window as she turns the grappling gun over in her hands.

She starts paying attention to the blogs. No one’s seen Robin for at least a week. Batman has been in and out of town, just present enough that she’s pretty sure he isn’t taking a bereavement.

She half expects one of the two of them to track her down, but when Dad’s been in jail a week she realizes they’ve decided to leave her alone. So she grabs some gym clothes and jogs her way down to the gym Robin recommended.

The trainer is a burly guy with facial scaring who takes one look at her and says, “Rob’s friend, right? Stephanie Brown.”

Because _of course_. Of course Robin knows who she is. And has passed her identity onto some sketchy looking guy at a boxing gym. She hikes her duffel bag up on her shoulders and refuses to break eye contact. “Friend is a strong word.”

“Not a fan of the odious little shit, either?” Scarface asks.

Stephanie hesitates. While her brief encounter with Robin had left her with exactly the same impression, she can’t help but remember the grappling gun stashed under a loose board in her room and the way her Dad’s operation crumbled as soon as Robin got involved.

Scarface laughs at the look. “Yeah, that’s about my reaction, too. I thought he was a cyborg until the first time I saw him pet a dog.”

Stephanie sputters out a laugh and when Scarface extends a hand and introduces himself as Paulo Zorillo she shakes it.

“Okay.” When Zorillo grins she doesn’t notice the scar so much. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

* * *

Stephanie hits the mats.

Again.

They’ve been at it for twenty minutes and she’s landed less than a dozen hits, all of them glancing. She’s shaking with exhaustion while Zorillo lightly bounces on his toes. It doesn’t look like he’s broken a sweat.

Stephanie’s got a few slowly forming bruises from body blows and a split lip from where she hit the mats. She’s lucky Zorillo’s mostly avoided blows to the face. She already has enough to explain to Mom.

She pushes herself up to Zorillo’s growing delight. “Estás loca, chica. You fall and fall and you just keep getting back up.”

Stephanie raises her fists.

“Basta, basta.” Zorilla tosses his own gloves aside. “I see why Robin likes you. I can definitely work with this.”

“Work with what?” Stephanie says, breath heaving.

“That’s why Rob sent you, right? Your basics are…” He tilts a hand side to side. “But the rest of it, well, been a while since I saw someone like you.”

Stephanie wavers on the edge of indignation. “Terrible basics and too much stubbornness?”

“Okay basics,” Zorillo counters. “A collections of dirty moves, and _potential._ Come back tomorrow. We fix the basics.”

She hesitates. “I’m super broke.”

Zorillo laughs. “Favor for Rob. I do this one for free.”

* * *

When Mom’s not pulling doubles, she worrying about Stephanie.

Stephanie tells her about the gym, even invites her down to watch one of the sparring matches where she manages to take down a guy twice her size. She gets a lecture about the dangers of concussions and after that, she gets one of those small sad smiles. “You’re worried about Dad coming back, huh? You know I won’t let him hurt you again.”

But after a few hundred falls with Zorillo, Stephanie knows she can take it. She’s only ever wanted to make sure her mom was okay. “I don’t need protection.”

Mom hugs her long enough for it to become uncomfortable, her face buried in Stephanie’s hair.

* * *

She picks of the habit of talking during her fights.

It drives Zorillo _crazy_ , but it also works as a distraction. Angry people fight sloppy and if Stephanie Brown is good at anything, it’s making people angry. She loves and hates that about herself. The ability to look at a person and deconstruct them to the point where it’s anger rather than precision that fuels their fists.

“C’mon,” she goads to the skinny nineteen year old across from her. “Never gonna get abs if you don’t start working for them.”

He’s another one of those fighters who doesn’t want to hit a girl. Stephanie starts most of her sessions with guys like this. She thinks Zorillo is trying to make a point to the newcomers: Anyone can be dangerous. Pulling punches can get you in trouble.

She sees the half-hearted haymaker and decides to have a little bit of fun. She could have dodged if she wanted, but instead she tilts back just enough to make the blow glancing and tosses herself to the mats.

Zorillo buries his face in his hands, already knowing her plans.

“Oh my God,” Skinny Kid says. “Are you all right?”

She waits until he reaches for her and yanks the offered arm, flipping neatly so his shoulders hit the mat and Stephanie can roll up on top of him in a pin.

“Stephanie, pelea _limipo_.”

Stephanie grinned. “Why? It’s not like anyone out there fights fair.”

Skinny Kid scrambles to his feet, blushing all the way down his chest.

“Who you fighting out _there_ , chica?” Zorillo gestures vaguely to the streets. “I can get you on a competition circuit but you have to stop pulling shit like this!”

“Who says I want on the competition circuit?” Stephanie retorts, though the idea is tempting if only for the money. 

Zorillio’s face flickers and a few things click into place. The way he’s always exasperated, but never mad when she pulls out one of her dirty tricks. The way he corrects her stance from a distance rather than by hand like he does with so many others. The way he’s been building her up by giving her opponents he knows she can beat.

He thinks she’s an abuse victim looking to take back power. At Robin’s suggestion, he’s probably done the same favor for other women more than once.

She opens her mouth to correct the notion, but thinks better of it. It’s not like she wants to explain that she met Robin wearing a costume.

* * *

The grappling gun is intuitive enough to fire, but the rest of it…

Stephanie wishes there was an instruction manual. The aim has to be precise. The insistent pull of the rope tends to takes her by surprise and she almost always winds up climbing the last few feet.

Not that she’s swinging on anything like gargoyles at the moment. She’s working up to it. She’ll master the construction site by her house and then she’ll get a move on.

 _Dad’s already in jail_ , a voice whispers in her head. _You don’t need to learn this shit anymore._

But Stephanie loves this. Creeping through the city wearing a costume, piecing together clues. And ever since she started at the gym, well, she’s been building to…

* * *

Spoiler take two.

She keeps stuff local. Mom’s been trying to get them out of Lower Gotham, but they can’t quite afford it. And being local, she hears things. Rumors about kids at school. Their parents. The gangs that are recruiting.

And Stephanie just starts… writing it all down. All the rumors and the cryptic hints. Then, because she’s not a snitch, she sneaks out at night and confirms what she can. She leaves a lot of the drug runners alone, but the ones in gangs, the ones that could cause real danger, she gets involved.

It’s mostly just pictures, snapped with one of those disposable cameras and dropped in the mailbox for the GCPD. On the outside, she labels the camera with the suspect, the date and the crime. At first she’s not sure it helps, but one night she overhears the police talking about a tip from _Camera Guy_ and she knows it’s all been worth it.

The actual fighting, well, she’s working up to the actual fighting. Zorillo, at her request, had shown her the best moves for disarming someone with a gun, but she’s afraid. You don’t get to make a mistake when dealing with a gun.

She’s been back on the streets for almost two weeks before she finally sees fit to start a fight. It’s not planned. Her route for the evening is already finished, but she hears screams and before she consciously registers the decision, she swings herself down and hits boots to the bad guy’s back as his victim scurries away.

The Bad Guy hits the ground and when he turns, his face is a mask of terror.

Only the terror melts as soon as it becomes clear that Stephanie is not Batman. That Stephanie is blonde and a woman and fourteen years old.

He sputters out a laugh.

“Oh man,” Stephanie says, “I’m about to spoil your night.”

* * *

There’s a _kid_ at the gym.

And yeah, she understands that she’s a kid, too, but this guy’s maybe twelve, with pale skin and clear blue eyes. He’s clutching a camera to his chest, stopping every so often to snap pictures of the fights.

Or, more specifically, snap pictures of _her_ fights.

Zorillo catches her eye and tilts his head at the kid as if asking _you know him_? Stephanie shakes her head and the quizzical look melts into something predatory. Stephanie sighs and checks the tape on her fists, patting her padded headgear.

The kid’s eyes go huge as Zorillo talks to him, eventually taking his camera for safekeeping and helping him tape his fists up.

Five minutes later, the kid’s in the ring with her, looking hilariously out of place with his oversized headgear. He’s scrawny and pale and Stephanie revises down her estimate of his age.

“Rite of passage,” Zorillio says from the ropes. “First time at the gym, take on one of my best students.”

“You’ve done this before, right kid?” Stephanie asks.

“I’m not a _kid,_ ” he says with a hint of indignation. “I’m almost thirteen!”

Still twelve, then. Stephanie’s first guess was right.

“All right,” she says. “But that wasn’t the question.”

Instead of an actual answer, he makes the first move.

Good form, Stephanie notes, parrying it away.

There’s something intense in the kid’s gaze, his movements textbook precise. On the ropes, she sees Zorillo lean forward like the fight is already more interesting than he anticipated.

They feel each other out for a few seconds and Stephanie lets the kid make the first real move. It winds up being a kick aimed at her midsection. Stephanie catches it by the heel and pushes up, expecting to have him hit the ground.

Instead the kid turns with the throw, hands hitting first as he turns the block into some kind of crazy gymnast move. Stephanie’s eyebrows hit her hairline.

Not a gymnast move. More like the kind of crazy shit you saw out of Batman and Robin.

The fight picks up after that. Stephanie has a slight size advantage but the kid is slippery and using a different set of moves than Stephanie usually sees.

After a few minutes, she spots a chance and closes the distances between them, baiting him into catching one of her blocks. When he tries to twist that into a hold, Stephanie stomps hard on his toes. His grip breaks in surprise and she hooks her foot around his ankles and topples him.

“Stephanie,” Zorillo chastises as Stephanie pins him.

The kid taps out.

“He’s the one who started kicking,” Stephanie says. “As far as I knew we were _boxing._ ”

“Technicalities,” Zorillo mumbles.

“No rules in real fights,” the kid says from the ground.

Stephanie reaches a hand to help him up. “See, he gets it. He’s not bad, either. Judo?”

The kid nods. “And Aikido. Karate.” He looks suddenly sheepish as he continues, “T'ai Chi.”

Zorillo steps between them and offers the kid his camera back. “I’m impressed. Stop by sometime if you need some practice. I’m sure Stephanie is up for another go.”

The kid blushes down his neck and clutches the camera to his chest.

Stephanie takes pity on him. “I’m Stephanie Brown.”

“I know,” the kid says. “I’m Tim Drake.”

The camera in his hands looks way too pricey for this side of town. Not to mention the fact that he’s studied half a dozen different martial arts techniques. “What brings you over here, Tim?”

“I was actually looking for you.”

* * *

Tim offers to take them out for food and Stephanie, who is not one to turn down free waffles, agrees.

Outside the boxing ring, Tim is a mix of wide-eyed earnestness and nervous ticks. He’s constantly playing with the sleeves of his oversized hoodie, taking in all the exits at the diner. If it wasn’t for the obvious expense of the camera, Stephanie would have pegged him for a jumpy street kid.

He orders a coffee from the harried waitress who frowns at him but doesn’t try to push him into anything else. Stephanie orders the all-day breakfast special and waits for the kid to start talking.

When he doesn’t seem inclined, Stephanie prompts him. “Out with it. Why the stalking?”

Tim flinches at the word _stalking_ , but doesn’t correct it. He looks left, right, and leans forward before saying, “I wanted to talk about Batman.”

Stephanie laughs. “Batman? Seriously? You’re stalking me because of Batman.”

Tim makes a frantic motion for Stephanie to take the volume down even though the other diners seem uninterested in their conversation.

“Robin’s been gone for a couple months now,” Tim whispers. “Ever since then, Batman’s been getting more and more violent. Without Robin to balance him out… Gotham won’t be able to take it if the GCPD needs to take Batman down.”

“Batman’s always been a giant weirdo,” Stephanie says.

“He needs someone watching his back,” Tim pushes earnestly. “He needs someone to be Robin and Robin is either dead or gone or…”

“I get it, you think Batman’s kid’s been babysitting him rather than the other way around. I don’t see what this has to do with you stalking me.”

“You can help.”

“Why? Because I’m training at a boxing gym?”

“No,” Tim says plainly. “Because you’re Spoiler.”

Before she can pick her jaw up off the table, the waitress comes back with their order. “You kids okay here?”

Tim nods and she leaves. Then he leans down to take a sip of coffee, his mouth dipping in disappointment. “Ugh. Decaf.”

Stephanie finds her voice. “You know who I am.”

“I figured out Batman, too,” Tim says smugly. “And Robin. Well, Robin first and then Batman. Batman’s kind of obvious after you figure out Robin.”

“Don’t tell me!” Stephanie slaps her hands over her ears.

Tim frowns. “Why? I mean if you’re going to start working with him.”

“I’m not!” Stephanie says. “Because that’s insane. I’m the daughter of a low level supervillain. He’s _Batman_. It wouldn’t work.”

Tim snorts and when Stephanie’s indignation mounts, he says, “I’m sorry. It’s just really funny if you know who Robin is.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I care about Gotham,” he says. “And I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who could do it.”

“Really…” Stephanie stares for a long moment, thinking of the list of martial arts techniques Tim professed to have studied and the slippery way he’d fought. “The only one?”

* * *

She doesn’t notice the shadow until it starts talking.

“Stephanie Brown,” intones a low rumble.

Stephanie nearly falls off the roof, unconsciously checking if her scarf and hood are still in place to conceal her identity. “Batman.”

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Batman says. “You’re too young.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Stephanie retorts before her brain catches up to the reality of the conversation. “Your kid was in, like, pre-school.”

“It’s dangerous,” Batman says, his voice dropping to a low rumble. Less angry parent, more scourge of Gotham.

“I don’t care,” Stephanie snaps. “And neither did Robin.”

Batman’s eyes flicker down the grappling gun secured next to her thigh. “I’m going to need that equipment back.”

Stephanie hides her flicker of panic in bravado. “You’ll have to take it.”

Batman takes a step forward.

Stephanie continues, “And I know I probably won’t be able to stop you. But despite the shit storm that is you and the police, I’m pretty sure you don’t want to take a girl’s last line of defense. Because bat-gadget or not, I won't stop.”

“Stephanie,” Batman growls.

“Bite me, Batman,” Stephanie chirps.

She shoots off a line and doesn’t stop shaking until three blocks later when it’s clear Batman let her go.

* * *

It only takes a couple seconds to realize new Robin isn’t the same as the old one. He’s a lot smaller for one, not to mention a lot _whiter_.

He’s also someone Stephanie recognizes immediately. “Camera Kid!”

“Tim Drake,” Robin corrects immediately.

“Oh,” Stephanie says plopping down on the rooftop beside him. “You’re definitely going to have to work on that.”

Tim blushes as red as his costume. “Don’t usually see people I know when I’m out here.”

As opposed to Stephanie who’s seen almost exclusively people she recognizes from the neighborhood. She bumps his knee with her leg. “Batman found you yet? Because he is not a super big fan of kids wearing costume.”

“I’m—” Tim starts.

“Almost thirteen,” Stephanie finishes for him. “I remember.”

“Officially thirteen,” Tim corrects. “Spent a while training.”

Stephanie opens her mouth to reply, but she falters as she notices the quality of the uniform, the obvious body armor, the way the weapons stashed on his belt are razor sharp. “Holy shit, you’re either a hell of a good cosplayer or…”

Tim has a sheepish grin on his face.  “Batman really needed a Robin.”

He’s almost two years younger than Stephanie. And while she knows he can fight a little, he’s small, slight, and has none of the power-glower energy that the last Robin exuded. And it was apparently too dangerous for _Stephanie_ to be out here. 

“Batman…” She licks her lips. “Is a gigantic fucking _hypocrite_.”

* * *

She likes Tim, though.

She’s actually a little alarmed by how _much_ she likes Tim. The kid’s a lunatic. He blackmailed Batman into making him Robin. He hacks into everything from Arkham Asylum to the CIA for no stated reason other than _to see if I could._ His brain works twice as fast as Stephanie’s, scrolling through if-then scenarios, disaster planning two levels deeper than Stephanie even considers.

Stephanie leaps before she looks and the better she gets, the more likely she is to start leaping. She gets herself into fights while Tim is still assessing and she thinks, maybe, that’s why they work so well together.

She wipes the blood off of her split lip and sits down next to him, shoulders touching. The purple of the Spoiler costume clashes horribly with the red of Robin, but she decides to overlook the contrast.

“I owe you one,” she says.

“You were in over your head.”

“I was a teeny bit outmatched, but I guarantee my endurance would have kicked in.”

“But you said you owe me one.”

“Endurance fights are the worst, Timmy.” Her face softens. “But there’s a chance you may have saved my ass. So yeah. I owe you.”

“Great,” Tim replies. “I got roped into a family dinner. You’re coming.”

* * *

Technically, she supposes, _family dinner_ hadn’t been a lie.

It’s just Stephanie had been led to believe it was Tim’s family. He’d told her more than once that his parents were usually out of town and that they typically put in a good two days of parenting before forgetting about Tim again, which is apparently how they all prefer it.

She’d thought she was supposed to be a fake girlfriend or something. Figured that was the reason he was so nervous about the whole thing. Stephanie wouldn’t have minded. Tim is cute in his own dorky way and the fake dating thing could have worked on her mom, too.

Tim picks her up on a motorcycle that he definitely doesn’t have the license to be riding and zips them into more and more expensive neighborhoods before coming to a stop in front of the biggest Gothic monstrosity of a house that she’s ever seen. Tim parks his bike and pulls off his helmet with a sheepish smile. She’d known he was rich but… “Timbo, this is as big as Bruce Wayne’s house.”

She glances over and then does a double take, because the kid has no poker face at all when you take him out of costume.

“Tim,” she says slowly. “ _Is this Bruce Wayne’s house?”_

Tim nods miserably.

“ _Why?_ ”

“Because Damian’s home,” Tim says. “And by all accounts, he might actually like you.”

“Damian Wayne?” Stephanie tries to scramble through what she knew of him from the tabloids. There’d been some talk that he was at school overseas. There is no way Stephanie could have even met…

Her brain stutters.

Fuck. Damian Wayne. Who left town about the same time as the first Robin did. And Robin’s dad was Batman. Was… Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_. Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne is Batman. She’s at Batman’s house.

“Are you okay?” Tim asks.

“No,” Stephanie snaps. “I think you broke me. I didn’t want to know _any_ of this.”

The front door to the manor opens and an elderly man greets them, “Master Timothy, Miss Brown.”

A butler. Batman has a butler. A bat-butler.

“Stephanie, this is Alfred,” Tim says and then grins. “The scariest person in the family.”

“I hate you so much right now.” Stephanie draws herself up and extends her hand. Fuck it. She’s in thrift shop jeans, drug store make-up, standing in front of the house of the richest man in Gotham. Who also happens to be Batman.

But she’s Stephanie Brown.

Batman’s the one who should be scared.

* * *

Damian Wayne is everything she remembers about Robin. He talks in brisk, curt sentences, lightly accented and heavy on disdain. He’s not a fan of Tim’s and he’s pretty pissed at Batman. The only time there’s anything close to a smile on his face is when he mentions someone named Jon Kent. From what Stephanie can glean, Kent’s a childhood friend.

So, yeah, Kent’s way more qualified than her to be at a Wayne family dinner. She fantasizes about it.

“How’d the two of you meet?” Alfred asks, topping off Stephanie’s glass of water. God, she doesn’t even drink and she wishes it was wine.

“He wandered in the gym where I work out,” Stephanie says, gesturing to Damian. “And you know Zorillo. Threw Tim in the ring with me. I kicked the shit out of him.”

“With a dirty move,” Tim says.

“Only after you started it,” Stephanie counters.

“There’s no such thing as a dirty move,” Damian says haughtily. “Only unforeseen ones. I’m pleased to see you took my advice.”

“Advice?” Bruce Wayne echoes.

Stephanie ignores him. Ignores _Batman._ Because this entire situation is insane. “See, original flavor is on my side.”

“Since when are there sides?” Tim snaps back, but there’s a gleam in his eyes, the hint of a smile on his face.

She thinks there might be the same on Damian’s face. It’s the first sign of something other than outright antagonism.

“Of course there’s sides.” She gulps at her water. “My side’s winning.”

* * *

The thaw only lasts about twenty minute before dinner ends with Damian’s curt goodbyes and glares in Tim’s direction. Then Bruce Wayne—Fuck, Bruce Wayne who is also Batman—asks if he can speak to Stephanie alone.

“They both seem rather fond of you,” he comments absently.

“I only met Damian once before today. Honestly, my first conversation with you was longer.”

And there it is, in the open, more or less. Stephanie knows Bruce Wayne is Batman.

He nods curtly. “Tim told you.”

Stephanie scoffs. “Tim asked me to a family dinner and showed me enough puzzle pieces to put it together, but he didn’t actually tell me.” She studies his face. “And I’m guessing secrecy was one of the contingencies for being Robin.”

“He found a technicality,” Bruce Wayne says. He sounds almost amused. “Drake Industries will be a force to reckon with when Tim takes the helm. But if I’ve learned one thing about Tim it’s that he has a good heart and even better instincts.”

He rounds the corner to loom over her.

“And he likes you.”

Stephanie stands with her back straight, milking every inch of her frame.  “Well, I am pretty great.”

The corners of Bruce Wayne’s mouth twitch. “I actually have something for you. I mean, so long as you insist on staying out on the street, it would be irresponsible for me to leave you unprotected.”

And then he walks to a clock and manipulates the hands until a secret passage opens up. Stephanie follows him, trying to keep the awe from her face as the secret elevator opens to a _literal cave._ Actual Batman has a _literal cave_.

“Mr. Wayne,” the butler greets. “I have the package you asked me to prepare for Ms. Brown.”

Bruce Wayne raises an eyebrow at her and she picks up the package.

The suit is mostly black, but with trim in the same color as the Spoiler costume. She knows without touching that it’s probably sturdier too. That it would save her some bruises and maybe one day her life. Dead center of the chest is a bat emblem. 

“What’s the catch?” Stephanie asks.

“No catch,” Bruce Wayne says. “Tim clearly thinks you’re worth it. The last thing Damian did before he left town two years ago was give you a grappling gun. I think you might be the only thing they agree on. And having you in the loop would reduce the chances of miscommunication in the field.”

“Okay.” Stephanie traces the emblem. “I’m in.”

* * *

The press immediately dubs her Batgirl.

She doesn’t hate it. She’s still mostly an independent entity, not allowed unsupervised in the Batcave, but she’s got a communicator that links her up to Batman and Robin and a purple bat on her chest.

But she still introduces herself as Spoiler. Bat-insignia or not, she’s still Stephanie Brown.

* * *

Damian Wayne is the biggest pain in the ass Stephanie has ever met.

And she _likes_ him. She’s not crazy about how he treats Tim, but if you ignore literally everything he says, you notice how he does things like rescue cats from trees and give baby vigilantes their very first grappling guns. If you do listen to what he says, well, he’s mean, but in a way that’s almost funny. She watches him critique of a petty mugger’s technique so viciously that the poor guy winds up turning himself in. Under all the bluster, he seems like he might be a genuinely good person.

Stephanie’s not sure how many other people notice. Hell, she’s not sure _Batman_ knows. Tim might, but he’s in the splash zone for a lot of vitriol so she doesn’t really blame him for not following up.

Still, knowing Tim, even bringing Stephanie into the fold is probably a step to smoothing out relations with Damian.

 _Hurricane Stephanie_ , Dad always called her, annoyed even back before she figured him out. _No one stands a chance._

She decides her and Damian are going to be friends.  

And that’s it.

* * *

Damian officially relocates out of Gotham on a blustery fall afternoon. His car is a beater, an decade old Honda that looks out of place in the face of Wayne Manor’s opulence. She taps twice on the hood. “What, were they out of Teslas at the store?”

“It’s on loan from my roommate,” Damian says. “I’ve yet to procure my own transportation. I’ve been overseas and most civilized countries have some method of rapid public transportation.”

“Yeah,” Stephanie agrees. “The buses aren’t exactly rapid, but hey, at least they try. Won’t your roomie be stranded? I’ve heard you shouldn’t be taking the Bludhaven buses alone.”

Damian stares at her. “At least Drake didn’t volunteer all of our secrets.”

“Ooo,” Stephanie coos, ignoring the jab at Tim. “A mystery, secret roommate whose identity needs _protecting_.”

Damian shoves a suitcase into her hands and picks up a bag of his own, hauling it down the driveway and to the car. “I suppose there’s no harm considering you already know the rest of our secrets. Besides, Jon’s needs protecting even less than he needs a car.”

“Roommate work out or something?”

“No. He can fly.”

Because of course he can. She remembers the vague rumors someone flying through Gotham. Back from before Tim was Robin. She stows the bag in the trunk, and pulls out her phone to try to google it.

Damian reaches past her to adjust the placement of the bag in the car, letting out a click as he sees her search. “-tt- Stephanie, I would have thought you’d be a better detective by now.”

Stephanie slips her phone back into her pocket.

“Jon Kent’s your roommate,” she guesses. It’s the only friend she’s ever head him mention, always with a fond half-smile. “And Robin’s best friend has always been Superboy.”

“It’s not anymore.”

“Dude, have you seen Tim and Conner? They are like sickeningly cutesy.”

“Drake and I have very little in common.”

“Except for that one incredibly huge secret identity related thing.”

Damian closes the trunk. “Why are you here, Stephanie?”

Stephanie crosses her arm. “We’re friends.”

Damian starts to counter.

Stephanie raises a finger and raises her voice. “We’re _friends._ And friends help each other move. Besides. I brought you a cake.”

Damian scowls at the Tupperware in the backseat of the car. She’d made the cake herself. Dyed the icing purple. There are sprinkles. It’s a little lopsided and the icing has smashed against the lid of the Tupperware, but it’s damn good cake.

Stephanie walks to the passenger’s side door and puts a hand on the handle. “Come on, Damian. No one moves without company.”

“Jon will help when I get there.”

“But he’s not here to ride with you.”

“He has work.”

“BatDad isn’t here either. Or _Tim_.”

“That,” Damian growls, “was by _design_.”

“And you didn’t think to uninvited me from Damian’s Escape from Gotham?”

“An oversight I suspect I will pay for dearly.”

Stephanie beams at him. She sees his lips twitch.

The car door unlocks.

* * *

Stephanie gets invited to Bruce Wayne’s gala.

She has to repeat it in her head.

Sixteen year old, Lower Gotham native, Stephanie Brown gets invited to Bruce Wayne’s gala.

She’s not the only one. Damian and Jon both give her a nod before sneaking off. Tim makes a beeline for her as soon as he spots her and attaches himself to her side.

“I hate it here,” Tim says.

Stephanie is kind of lost in the glamor of it. She’s wearing her favorite dress and her best knock-off jewelry, but from the quality of the rest of the room, she probably could have gone in the stuff she wears to train with Zorillo and been the same level of under-dressed. “It’s for a good cause, right?”

The Martha Wayne foundation is one of the few that seems to make a true difference in the city. Even if Stephanie is struggling to connect the money spent on something like this with the meager funds that actually make it to her side of Gotham.

“If the cause is ego, sign everyone up.”

Stephanie frowns. Tim’s usually not this pessimistic. “Did Damian say something?”

Tim scowls and Stephanie suspects the answer is _yes_ , but probably not recently. With Jon and Stephanie running interference, they probably won’t even cross paths today, but she knows it eats at him. Damian was his hero and reality is a significantly bigger pain in the ass.

“It’s not Damian,” Tim says.

Which meant it was his family. The Drakes had probably been invited, but she knows without asking that only Tim is in attendence. Stephanie hasn’t managed to even _meet_ Tim’s parents. They tend to average two weeks at home every six months. Stephanie’s been helping Tim sneak his stuff into one of the spare rooms in Wayne Manor.

Literally no one but Alfred seems to have noticed.

She points at one of the crowd at random. A nervous looking man in a black suit but no tie, his eyes skittering from woman to woman. “What do you think? Sleeping with his assistant?”

“That’s Kevin Devine,” Tim answers absently. “Believe it or not, faithful, but he’s embezzling from his company.”

“Why do you know that cold? Seriously. It’s no fun if you know that cold.”

Tim snags a pair of champagne glasses as a waiter passes by and slips one of them into Stephanie's hand. “Come on, Ms. Brown. If you want the full gala treatment, you have to gossip with the best of them.”

Stephanie takes a sip the drink. “And you know everything about everyone.”

Tim smirks into his own drink and they spend the evening pointing out socialites to each other and guessing their stories. Tim’s seem to hold some degree of truth at the start, but as they swipe more and more champagne they get more outlandish.

“How about that one?” Stephanie asks, pointing at the dark haired woman draped over Bruce’s shoulder. She has a pixie cut and a dark red dress, her red-lipped smile devious as she whispers something in Bruce’s ear.

“Pickpocket,” Tim says.

Stephanie laughs.

“Seriously.” Tim gestures with the champagne flute. “Watch the hands.”

He’s right. Under Bruce Wayne’s—Batman’s—nose she swaps what must be a thousand dollar wrist watch with a homemade leather bracelet. Stephanie snorts.

“Selena Kyle,” Tim says. “Better known as _Catwoman_.”

“No shit.”

“Her and Bruce are kind of… frenemies? I guess.”

“She’s got balls of steel stealing from Batman.” Stephanie sighs. “I think I know who I want to be when I grow up.”

There’s a tap on her shoulder. She turns around, her hackles up. Some of the champing sloshes over her hands.

Standing in front of her is Jon Kent, blue eyes bright under his black framed glasses. He takes the flute out of her hand and swipes Tim’s in the same motion. “I think you kids are done for the night.”

“I’m the heir to Drake Industries,” Tim says, puffing out his chest. “This is part of the job.”

“You’re a couple drunk fifteen year olds.”

“I’m sixteen,” Stephanie protests.

“Which is still not twenty-one,” Jon says. “Look either you come with me or I pull out the big guns.”

“Brucie’s busy,” Tim says. Now that Stephanie’s trying to focus, she can hear the slight slur to his words. “And it’s not like my parents are around to care.”

“Alfred’s the big guns,” Jon says.

That shuts them both up.

* * *

Later, as Tim snores against her side, she overhears Jon and Damian talking about him. She pushes Tim’s head off her shoulder. Even asleep, his brow is pinched, his face troubled.

“Give him a break,” Jon says. “He’s had a rough time.”

“A rough time means mistakes in the field.” Damian’s voice is rough. “And that _cannot happen._ My father relies on him.”

“Rough time?” Stephanie asks from the doorway. “What do you mean rough time? Did something happen to Tim?”

She’s met with identical stares of disbelief.

“I would have thought he’d told you,” Damian says.

“He should have told you,” Jon echoes. “How else are you supposed to help him?”

“Tell me what?” Stephanie sways slightly, her head still buzzing from the champagne.

“He’s had a couple friends die,” Jon says. “Bart and Conner. Only a few months apart.”

“They died in the line of duty,” Damian adds.

“Line of duty?”

“Kid Flash and the current Superboy,” Damian says.

“He’d told me about them, but he never…” Stephanie falters. “I didn’t… wait, Jon are _you_ okay? You used to be Superboy, right? Aren't you guys like related or something?”

Jon shoves his hands in his pocket, avoiding her eyes. “We weren’t nearly as close as him and Tim.”

“Jesus.” She starts to step forward to hug Jon, but she notices that Damian’s already got the physical contact handled, a protective arm slung over his partner’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Make sure he doesn’t get himself killed, too,” Jon says.

Stephanie looks back to the room with Tim slumped sideways on the couch, his face still creased, even in sleep. “Yeah. I’ll do my best.”

* * *

Tim solves the problem for her.

They’re at Zorillo’s gym, Tim holding the heavy bag steady as Stephanie jabs at it. It’s just them in this corner of the gym, Zorillo working with a different pair in the ring. Tim’s been distracted and quiet all day, like his brain is somewhere else. Stephanie’s always used this kind of workout to ground herself, narrow her world to her fists, the roll of sweat down her back and the soft thud as her gloves hit the bag, but when Tim's not actively fighting, he's somewhere else.

“My Dad found out.”

“About what?” Stephanie asks, her rhythm breaking.

“Everything,” Tim says. “Conner. Bart. _Robin_.”

“Shit,” Stephanie breathes. “I can’t imagine if Mom… how did he take it?”

“Not great.” Tim leans against the bag. “He says he’s proud of me, but he’s worried.”

“Invite him to watch one of our sparring sessions. He’ll see you can hold your own. I’ll even go easy on you.”

 Tim doesn’t smile. “I think he’s right. Stephanie. He asked me to stop and I told him I would. But I can’t leave Batman alone.”

“He’s fine. Flamebird can literally airlift Nightwing here in about five minutes if he’s in trouble.”

“That’s not what he needs. He needs Robin around. Someone to keep him in check.”

“He’s got you.”

“I was always just a placeholder,” Tim says. “And my head’s not in it right now. This was never the endgame for me. Not like it is to you.”

Stephanie stares at him.

“I think,” Tim continues, “you’ll make a great Robin.”


	2. Robin

Batman is not on board with the swap. Stephanie isn’t super thrilled at gaining a grumpy bat as a partner either. He’s been not-so-subtly trying to get her to quit.

But she promised Tim, and following Tim’s plans rarely leads her astray.

“You’re favoring your left side,” Batman says.

She’s favoring her left side because she’s left handed. But apparently Batman demands Robin is ambidextrous. She lets out a frustrated breath of air against the mats and pushes herself up.

“If you keep being stubborn you’ll never be ready.”

“No.” Stephanie turns. “I’ll never be _Damian_. Just like Tim was never Damian. I’ll never be Tim, either. But you know what, I can be Robin.”

Bruce purses his lips. She’s definitely scraped past Batman’s surface this time. Batman’s only expression is a glare.

She presses on. “You’ve worked with me before.”

“Any change in equipment…”

“Are you seriously saying I need retraining because of the costume?” She looks down pointedly. She’d worked with Alfred to tweak the Robin design a bit. The result was closer to Damian’s than Tim’s. Padded leggings in green. Dark red tunic. Black cape. No hood. No wings. No cowl. Just a green domino mask and her hair in a wild mane around her face. Different from Spoiler’s original gear for sure, but the costume the press kept trying to rename Batgirl was Alfred-Made and similarly cut.  “My gear is fine. My training is fine.”

“Could be better,” Batman says.

Undaunted, Stephanie continues, “Kind of like your communication skills.”

Another second of staring and then his lips twitch up and Bruce Wayne— _Batman—_ lets out a small huff of laughter.

Stephanie beams at him.

“Robin,” Batman says, extending a hand.

“Batman,” Stephanie answers and uses the handshake to toss him to the ground.

* * *

Damian makes an appearances her second night on patrol. Stephanie spots him two blocks before he makes his move. He does subtle better than Tim, but considering the family drama and the costumes, Stephanie doesn’t think the Bats are a particularly subtle group.

Nightwing wears a form fitting black suit with a subtle vee across the chest that invokes wings. In Bludhaven, he runs almost exclusively with Flamebird, Jon Kent, who wears the same suit in red like the dorky couple that they are.

If Jon’s not here, it’s a personal visit.

And if it’s a personal visit, it’s probably about Robin.

“Nightwing,” she greets as he appears next to her.

“Batgirl,” he says.

Stephanie scowls. “If you want to go throwback, it was always Spoiler.”

“I’m not calling you Robin.”

“I call you by your stupid, made-up name,” Stephanie snaps. “And you’re not using this one.”

“That doesn’t make it less mine.”

And okay, Stephanie gets that Damian has replacement issues. That he bailed for two years to find himself or whatever and it ended up what he was looking for was back home. It sucks realizing one of your parents is basically a supervillain. Talia al Ghul might be wildly out of Arthur Brown’s league, but Stephanie’s one of maybe ten people in the world who has absolutely been there. She gets it.

But what he did to Tim was not okay. Like hell she lets him do it to her, too.

“Where’d the name come from anyway,” Stephanie asks. “Because I don’t picture tiny feral Damian naming himself after a songbird.”

She delights in the array of micro expressions the flit past his face before settling into his practiced scowl. “The name was not my choosing. I’d found Raptor to be much more fitting.”

“Raptor?” Stephanie snorts. “Yeah that sounds more like you. Where did Robin come from then?”

Damian’s jaw clenches.

“You realize that if you don’t tell me, I’ll make your life a living Hell.” Stephanie grins. “And then Jon will tell me.”

“Jim Gordon,” Damian says. “After I introduced myself, he said I barely looked big enough to be a robin.”

Stephanie howls with laughter.

* * *

She still hangs out with Tim.

He still has dark rings under his eyes like he forgets to sleep, but his smiles seem a little more genuine, his skin a little less sallow. His dad drops him off, lingering like he wants to introduce himself, but seems mollified when Stephanie gives him a smile and a wave. Tim grabs her by the arm and leads her away before she can greet him.

“Dad’s gone crazy overprotective,” Tim says. “Which is funny because finding out should have guaranteed he knows I can protect myself.”

Stephanie thinks of how many bruises Tim’s parents must have missed. How many broken bones. How many fresh scars. “If it makes you feel better, my Mom freaked when I told her about the gym.”

Tim raises an eyebrow. “You tell her about the rest of it?”

“Of course not. She’s… she works nights, twelve hour shifts at the hospital. She started picking up a lot of overtime when Dad went to jail and never really stopped. She’s not even around when I would need cover.”

“That’s good.”

The stand awkwardly, staring at each other.

Stephanie breaks the silence. “Coffee or gym?”

“Gym,” Tim answers immediately.

The third street gym hasn’t changed much since the first time Stephanie came in. Still run down, still dark, but a half dozen different shout their hellos when she enters. Zorillo wraps her up in a hug, lifting her off her feet. “Been ages, Steph. ¿Qué pasa? You find someone else to train you?”

“Thought you weren’t interested since I didn’t want to go pro.”

“Stephanie, you could make us both a lot of money.”

“Pass,” Stephanie says. “But are we still good to claim a ring? Timbo here’s been slacking.”

Zorillo acquiesces with a smile and they part ways. They have a bit of an audience by the time they make their way out to the ring, which makes Tim frown. “You realize there are some gang affiliate guys in here, right?”

Stephanie shakes her head. “You really need to switch off once in a while.”

“Steph,” he says. “How do you want to play this?”

She _wants_ to play it without restraints. Wants to have the kind of fight they only got to have a few times in the Batcave, complete with the acrobatics no classically trained fighter uses. It’s what Tim clearly _needs_ right now.

But she has her own secret identity to protect.

“No flips,” she says with a sigh. “But I kind of want to put on a show.”

“Fine, but clean.”

They tap fists before they start. And when Tim dodges her first blow, she’s close enough to grab some of his too-shaggy hair.

So she pulls.

Tim, expecting it, pays her back in kind.

* * *

“I’ve got some people Batman might want to look into,” Tim says later. “A couple people in industry that have been playing out bribes. Give me another couple weeks and I might even be able pin some money laundering on Penguin.”

Stephanie slurps on her milkshake. “You know you’re still allowed to talk to him.”

Tim frowns at his coffee. “Dad would freak.”

“Timmy, pretty much anyone who knows you personally should be able to guess about the new Robin.”

Tim shrugs, but doesn’t seem like he’s changing his mind.

* * *

The press calls her Girl Robin.  

She seethes every time she sees it.

Because by Robin number three, the press should have figured out that while Robin might change, it’s still Robin. When Tim started, Robin was suddenly white, eight inches smaller and eighty pounds lighter and no one called him pale Robin. Yet she gets _Girl_ Robin. Not a woman even though she’s two years older than Tim. Which makes the speculation about Girl Robin and Batman’s love life in the tabloids even _creepier_.

Even Mom notices her reaction.

“I think it’s nice,” Mom says. “Gives little girls someone to look up to.”

“What about _Spoiler?”_ Stephanie moans.

Mom frowns. “You mean Batgirl?”

* * *

Stephanie isn’t as smart as Tim and she doesn’t have Damian’s sheer competence in fighting. The only real advantage she has over either of them is stubbornness. And that’s debatable as an advantage.

Because for all there are moments where working with Batman is smooth, easy and exhilarating, more often it’s an exercise in frustration on both sides.

“No,” Stephanie says.

“What do you mean, no?”

Stephanie glares. The case isn’t art theft, but art _fraud._ Someone passing off forgeries of old masters. Most of the originals have been lost for years. The only people disappointed are buyers rich enough to afford throwing away thousands of dollars on original art.

“No one’s been hurt,” Stephanie says.

“They’ve been defrauded.”

“They got a really nice painting that they may have overpaid for.”

“Robin,” Batman growls.

“Seriously.” Stephanie points at the research up on the computer. “Everything you’ve got says this guy is working out of Crime Alley. Which means instead of joining a gang or something, he found a way to make his money _painting_.  And he’s _good_ at it. Is Batman going to put a fist through his canvas or something? He doesn’t need a beat down, he needs a _scholarship._ ”

Batman’s face twitches. He makes several aborted attempts to formulate a response. And… okay, this has never happened before. People don’t win arguments with Batman.

“I’m going home,” she says, before the look on his face can wear off.

The next morning, there’s an article in the newspaper about Bruce Wayne sponsoring arts programs in poorer areas of Gotham. Stephanie smiles over her breakfast. Baby steps.

* * *

It ends like this:

Stephanie’s dad is released from jail.

Batman benches her for being too close to the situation. Stephanie expresses her displeasure loudly.

Then Batman fires her.

Batman’s fired her before. She’s only been Robin for about three months, but Batman’s already fired her sixteen times. She calls Tim who assures her that Batman fires people as a sign of affection. She calls Damian soon after who tells her to just ignore it. In the background she hears Jon yell that she should call for help if she needs it.

By the time she makes it back to the apartment, she’s almost talked herself down.

Then she finds her mother inside with a split lip and an eye that’s swelling shut.

“Was it Dad?” she asks.

“Stephanie, sweetheart…” Mom starts.

“Was it _Dad_?” she repeats, her voice rising.

“Don’t go after him, Stephanie,” Mom mumbles. “He’s looking for you, but _don’t go after him_.”

 She loses the next couple hours to ambulance calls and police interviews. Mom’s going to be okay, but Dad’s at large and he’s looking for her and Batman fired her and…

When the police clear the scene, she moves for the hole in the drywall behind her bed where she stashes her costume, running a hand over her familiar purple robes. She digs past them for the police radio she’d stolen from a cop car years ago and tunes in.

She’s not one hundred percent sure what she’s listening for. Her Dad is closer to Riddler wanna-be than Joker-style maniac, but there’s got to be some sign. After all, he’s looking for her. For some reason, he’s looking for _her._

The radio squawks, disturbance at a 6-415 on Third street. Batman made her memorize the police codes in her first couple weeks of Robin. Six was stay out of the area, four-fifteen was a disturbance. The area was the same street where she trained at a gym two days a week for the past few _years_.

* * *

No police on scene when she gets there. But the code said to avoid the area. Stephanie knows just as well as anyone that _stay out of the_ area actually means _let Batman deal with it._

She stands at the front door to the gym, familiar costume wrapped around her, stripped of the bells and whistles of Robin’s high tech gear. She takes a step forward and puts a gloved hand on the door to push, noting the broken padlock and the way the door scraped against debris. She feels across the wall for the light switch.

The fluorescents flicker on overhead, buzzing ominously.

And then she hears it, a low gurgling sound from behind the ring. She rounds the corner to find Zorillo on the floor, in a slowly growing pull of blood. She skids past the ropes and slides to his side.

His eyes are open. She tries to run through everything her Mom’s ever told her about her nursing job, trying to come up with _any_ way to figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it, but her mind is completely and terrifyingly blank. She settles with pressing her hands to the mess of wounds on his stomach, trying to apply enough pressure to stop the blood.

At the contact, Zorillo moans, his eyes focusing. “Stephanie,” he says.

“Spoiler,” Stephanie corrects.

“Lo mismo.” A fine mist of blood escapes his mouth with his voice. “Es obvio.”

“Obvious?” A bubble of hysterical laughter. “Three years I’ve been coming here.”

He coughs, his eyes suddenly focused on somewhere behind her.

“Fuck,” she swears. “Fuck, stay with me, Zorillo.”

Something hard hit her in the back of the head.

* * *

She wakes up somewhere else.

There’s a knot on the back of her head. A slow trickle of blood down her hair. Her hood is down, but she’s still wearing a Robin-style domino mask.

Not that it’s much help.

Arthur Brown stands in front of her.

She jerks more fully into awareness, recognizing her position. Her hands are behind her back, handcuffed, her ankles duct taped to either leg of a chair. Right. She’s done this before. Batman made her train for this.

“Cluemaster,” she greets.

“Stephanie,” he answers.

And, oh hell, he shouldn’t know that. He can’t know that. Her jaw clicks shut.

“Obvious,” Dad says, an unknowing echo of Zorillo’s words. “In retrospect at least. I had years in jail trying to figure out why Spoiler was so desperate to see me put away.”

“Because you’re a piece of shit.”

“Because she knew me,” Dad corrects. “Which meant I knew her.”

“You never had any idea who I was.”

“I tracked you down. Found the gym where you trained. Realized that you must have got noticed. Because Batman’s been running with a new Robin lately. A girl who looks a lot like my little Stephie.”

“Robin?” Stephanie cries. “This is about Robin?”

“Of course not.” Dad steps forward and takes Stephanie’s chin roughly in his hand. “It’s never about Robin. But Robin knows who Batman is. And that information is worth a good deal of money.”

“Like I’d ever tell you,” Stephanie spits, still trying to fight through her concussion to get her brain rolling. “Even if I did know.”

“I’ve seen you out there with him. Of course you know who he is.”

“Robin’s been hurt, you idiot. He asked me to do him a _favor._ I’ve only ever seen the big guy in full Bat costume.”

Dad falters. “If you were trying to cover an injury, Batman would have found someone who looked more like his sidekick.”

“Because there’s an overabundance of well-trained pre-teens in the city,” Stephanie spits.

“I’m not interested in any of them, Stephanie. No, this is about you, me and Batman.”

“Batman doesn’t give a shit about me.” She hates the pang that goes through her at the statement, but pushes through it. Between his fallout with Damian and Tim reaching his tipping point with barely a word from Bruce, she isn’t sure he cares. And those were the Robins he actually liked. Stephanie with her bag of dirty tricks and too-stubborn attitude has always been something different. “About any of us. Kind of like you.”

“So tell me his name.” Dad leans closer.

“Me and Batman aren’t tight,” Stephanie insists again. But she knows the way he smuggles coffee out on patrols. She reacts instinctively to his voice in the field. She tries to split that knowledge with her sudden doubt that he’s coming for her. “And I’d still pick him over you. _Any_ of them.”

She’s expecting the blow to the face, but it twists her nose sideways, sending a fountain of blood gushing down her face. She blinks against the spots in her vision, and lets out a soft oof as she finally manages to dislocate her thumb and slip the handcuffs.

“Tell me and I will leave you and your mother alone.” He reaches to her face and peels the domino mask off, gentleness completely at odds with her broken nose. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Like you did Mom?” Stephanie spits. No point in hiding anymore. Her face is out in the open. “What you want doesn’t matter. Only what you do. Who you are.”

“And who am I, Stephanie?”

“You’re my dad,” Stephanie says. “But you’ve never been my family.”

When the fist comes this time, Stephanie reaches for it with unchained hands and catches the punch, yanking her father into the follow through. Dad’s suddenly inches away from her face, his breath warm like it was when she was a kid and she’d managed to coerce him into picking her up.

Stephanie sets her face and since her feet are still tied, flips the chair as hard as she can. Her abs scream with the effort, but she gets enough rotation that the wooden framed chair hits her father in the back.

But the chair’s frame doesn’t break. She reaches down to try the bindings on her ankle. Dad’s already up, looming large. “You’ll pay for that one, Robin.”

His boot hits Stephanie’s stomach and she can’t do anything but curl up and try to absorb it.

Which is when a voice says, “You looking for Robin?”

Stephanie looks up, trying to focus, but it’s like having an out of body experience, because standing in the distance is Robin. _Her Robin._ Wild Blonde hair. Red tunic over dark green leggings.

It occurs to her as she feels herself losing consciousness, that only Tim would figure out a way to rescue her while preserving Robin’s identity. She’s a little jealous of how well he can pull of drag.

* * *

Her Mom’s at her bedside when she wakes up. She’s still wearing Dad’s beating, the bruises not yet yellowed which means Stephanie hasn’t been out long. Mom runs a hand through her hair.

“Dad?” Stephanie asks.

“Back in jail,” Mom answers.

Stephanie swallows. “Zorillo?”

“Your friend from the gym? He didn’t make it. If there had been…”

She cuts herself off, but Stephanie hears the rest. If someone had gotten to him sooner, he might have made it. And Stephanie had beaten the paramedics. She’d found him dying and she’d had no idea how to fix it.

“Your injuries aren’t bad,” Mom continues. “Dislocated thumb. Concussion. Bruised ribs. Overnight for observation and then we both go home.”

“They keeping you for observation, too?” Stephanie asks.

Mom smiles. It seems like it aggravates a cut on her lips. “Been a while since we had a girl’s night.”

Stephanie huffs out an answering laugh.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Mom says carefully. “The costume I mean.”

Stephanie freezes.

“And I don’t like that you’ve put yourself in danger. But Stephanie? I’m proud of you. I hope you know that I am so, so proud of you.”

* * *

A night after she gets home, Batman knocks on her bedroom window. Stephanie pushes herself out of bed, blinks away the headache and cracks open the window. “Before I let you in, I want us both to acknowledge that this is creepy.”

There’s a tiny twitch of the lips behind the cowl, but Stephanie’s too tired to be gleeful at the victory.

“I knocked,” Batman says.

She rolls her eyes and lets him in. “If you’re here to say _I told you_ , you can fuck right off.”

“I’m not here for that.” He shuffles his feet, looking impossibly huge in Stephanie’s tiny bedroom. “Are you all right?”

“You fired me.”

“I’ve come to understand over the past few years that I may not actually have the stature to fire Robin.”

And that tugs a smile to her face. “Tell Tim thanks, by the way.”

When she doesn’t get an immediate response, the smile falls from her face.

“Wait,” she says. “Is Tim okay?”

“That’s actually why I’m here,” Batman answers. “Tim’s Dad died.”

“What? When?”

“The same night we spent looking for you,” Batman answers.

Stephanie feels the statement settle onto her shoulders like a weight. “Where is he? You’ve got him, right? You didn’t let him.—“

“Alfred’s got him. He’s at the manor. He’s… Robin. You really think I would let him go anywhere else?”

And Stephanie hears when he means in the pause between words. He’s Robin. He’s family. And the Bats may be emotionally stunted, but they take care of each other.  

“You’ve got information about the funeral, right?”

Batman nods and hands her the invitation.

“Thank you,” Stephanie says. “And not just for this.”

“It’s no trouble,” Batman says. “You’re Robin, too.”

* * *

She stands next to Tim at the funeral, their shoulders close but not quite touching. His dad died when he was saving Stephanie’s ass and that feels like a debt that neither of them want to acknowledge. The service is tastefully somber and as the rest of the mourners disperse, she finds herself alone with Tim in front of the coffin.

She takes his hand. “I’m so sorry about your dad."

Tim breathes deep. “I keep thinking I could have stopped it if I’d been there.”

His fingers are slack against hers. “You couldn’t have known.”

“Wouldn’t have changed anything if I did,” Tim says listlessly. “I’d have still gone after you. You’re my best friend.”

“Mine, too,” Stephanie admits.

“But—” He licks his lips. “—I think I need some space.”

Their hands fall apart.

* * *

She only takes a few more patrols as Robin. Tim’s been working himself back into shape with a determination that scares her. Besides, Batman’s been way too nice to her and every time she winds up with blood on her suit, she flashes back to the gym and Zorillo’s blood soaking her hands.

She starts college at Gotham University. An associate’s degree in nursing if all goes according to plan. She doesn’t want to feel that helpless ever again.

“Nothing says there can’t be two Robins,” Batman tells her when she hands him her domino mask.

“I’ve never been Robin,” Stephanie says. “Not really. Wasn’t Batgirl either. Still Spoiler. But with my dad back in jail, I feel like I might try just being Steph. Besides. I think Tim needs Robin almost as much as Batman does.”

* * *

It takes some time to readjust. Stephanie finds herself at the campus gym some days, picking fights with frat guys who look like they deserve it, but for the most part, the nursing program keeps her busy. She’s managed to spend some more time with her mom. There’d been significantly more scholarship money than she’d expected, mostly likely product of the Wayne Foundation. It’s not a full ride, but if it had been, she would have made Bruce take it back. This way they can both pretend Batman isn’t taking care of her like she’s one of his own.

And for a while it’s good. She’s getting her feet under her. Making friends who don’t spend their time beating people up. She’s thinking of getting certified as an EMT to make up the difference in tuition.  She’s been to Bludhaven once or twice to con Damian into helping her with her chemistry homework. She’s been killing the lab section, but she’s always been better at action than theory.

It goes wrong all at once.

She’s on the phone with a classmate—one from out of state, who doesn’t quite understand that there are parts of the city ceded to supervillains—when there is a knock on the door. And even actively preaching Gotham-level paranoia on the phone, she forgets to check the peephole.

When the door opens, she sees a clown. Two-wide smile oozing out under his white face and slime green hair.

She drops the phone and draws up herself up for a fight.

The gun in the Joker’s hand cracks with a deafening bang.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I say this all the time, but it's not technically a cliffhanger if you've seen the aftermath in other parts of the series. :)


	3. Stephanie

The first time she comes to, it’s Jon Kent at her bedside. He shouts her name when she rouses and it sounds like he’s speaking with a megaphone. Her body aches, and the little information she pries from Jon would, on a normal day, send her spiraling into a panic.

But she’s too tired for that.

Joker shot her. Tim, Damian and Bruce are trying to hunt him down. She’s been in and out of surgery. It’s been long enough that Mom’s not the one sitting at her bedside.

They left Jon instead. Which means either the Bats think she’s in real danger or they’re _deep_ into the nightly vigil rotation. She tries to push harder but she gets the impression Jon’s been instructed against upsetting her.

Her focus is flagging and if he won’t give her a real answer, she at least wants something. “How bad is it?”

Jon pauses at the door, on his way out of the room for the doctor, and she knows the prognosis from the look on his face even before he admits, “Pretty bad.”

* * *

She tells the Doctor to wait for her Mom before giving the official prognosis. It’s not necessary. Stephanie’s eighteen and lives in her own tiny just-off-campus apartment, but she’s hurting and scared and she wants her mom. She zones out after the first few sentences, trusting Mom to pick out salient details, but she hears _paraplegia_ and _unlikely to walk again_ , which is…

It’s a lot. Mom takes notes, chatting with the doctor about physical therapy options, mentioning that Stephanie has been boxing for years. Stephanie loses the rest of the conversation with flashbacks of Zorillo’s dying in front of her.

When she checks back in, Mom and the doctor have moved onto discussing accessibility accommodations in her home. Mom doesn’t have the money to move or renovate and _this is really the clusterfuck that keeps on giving_.

“Batman’s worried he _knows_ ,” Tim tells her lowly later that night. His face is steeped in shadows. “He’s out of his mind trying to find him. Nightwing, too. Robin’s benched. Says I’m too close. Which is funny because I’ve never seen _him_ this worked up.”

Stephanie raises an eyebrow.

“It’s true. He’s talking civilly to _Damian_.” Tim’s eyes are wide and round like the fanboy he is. “Neither of them have yelled. It’s…”

“You love it,” Stephanie says. “You _nerd_.”

“Of course I don’t love it,” Tim snaps. “It’s only happening because you’re _here_. But it’s been a long time since I saw Batman and Robin working together like that.”

It’s not until later that she realizes this is the last conversation she has with Tim Drake.

She hates herself for not remembering how it ends.

* * *

 

They take her in for another surgery and when she wakes up, it’s all over. She catches sight of the news on a TV over the doctor’s head. Joker’s back in custody.

Flamebird had been the one to bring him in.

She knows something’s wrong on a visceral level. Batman doesn’t let metahumans in the city without reason. He has this weird paranoia where he thinks it would invite metahuman villains and Gotham’s already on the ropes dealing with its normal parade of lunatics.

But Jon caught the Joker. Jon who’s known the Batfamily for longer than anyone but literal Superman. Who, to Stephanie eyes at least, has never crossed one of Batman’s arbitrary rules even when it would have made life infinitely easier.

The doctor follows her gaze when he realizes he’s lost Stephanie’s attention, the tension in his body loosening. “Joker in custody,” he says in a shaky voice. “Thank God.”

He excuses himself from the room.

It never occurred to Stephanie that the people treating her were nervous. That they’d undoubtedly heard about Joker’s culpability in her injury. That they could have been waiting for him to come back and finish the job.

She grabs her phone and calls Tim. It rings to voicemail. She hangs up without leaving a message. She calls Damian to the same response. Panic spiking she tries Bruce. That one goes straight to voicemail. Which means it’s off or out of service.

She takes a deep and tries Jon who answers on the first ring. “Hey, Steph—“

“What the fuck happened?!” she demands.

There’s a long moment of silence. She hears a voice in the background. Damian, she thinks, something in her gut loosening.

“It’s bad, Steph,” Jon says. “I caught up with Joker, but it wasn’t… Look this isn’t something you should hear from _me_ and it isn’t something you should hear on the phone.”

“Jon, just tell me!”

“I’m sending Damian.” Jon sounds exhausted. “He’ll be there soon even if I have to bring him myself.”

* * *

 

She knows as soon as she see him.

Damian’s in street clothes, dark jeans and a dark gray hoodie. Around his dark-circled eyes are white spots from spirit glue he didn’t quite manage to remove. He lingers in the door, looking back and forth like he would rather be anywhere else.

“Who?” she asks and from his flinch she knows he understands the question.

Someone’s dead and it’s either Bruce or it’s…

“Drake,” Damian answers.

“Was it?” She can’t finish the thought.

“Joker,” Damian confirms. “Yes. I would have seen him hanged for the deed, but Jon intervened before I could reach him.”

There’s a dark undercurrent to his words and she’s suddenly reminded of Damian’s two-year stint in the League of Assassins. Of a more biblical sense of justice.

Her stomach churns.

Damian’s eyes widen as he watches her face. Slowly he steps to her bedside and wraps his arms around her. Stephanie returns the awkward hug and shifts over in the hospital bed to let him sit next to her. He keeps an arm around her shoulder and doesn’t say a word as she cries snotty tears against his hoodie.

“I won’t tell you things will get better,” he says. “But Stephanie, this is not insurmountable.”

She’s not sure if he’s talking about her injury, Tim’s death, or even Gotham vigilantes on the whole.

* * *

They include her in the discussion of the aftermath.

She hates them a little for that.

GCPD had managed to keep press from the crime scene, but that can’t last forever. Joker’s alive so he’s undoubtedly talking. And he knows, at least, that Robin’s dead. The crime scene photos suggest _torture_ , but the wounds, the actual fatal wounds…

Well, those looked self-inflicted.

There are only two real choices, given the body.

One: Let the press report the truth. That Tim Drake was Robin. That Tim Drake died at the Joker’s hands.

Two: Sell the story that these were two separate tragedies. That Joker murdered Robin and somewhere else, Tim Drake died by his own hands.

Option one… Stephanie likes option one. She suspects they all do. It gives Tim the hero’s exit. Robin was Tim’s identity to a deeper degree than even Stephanie or Damian could hope to understand. Letting the public know the truth, feels like the only correct legacy.

Except when Tim’s dad died, he went to live with Bruce. Tim was Stephanie’s best friend and in the middle of his stint as Robin, she’d taken over the costume. And you’d be able to look at Stephanie, all her time at the gym, and make the logical leap.

If anyone connects Tim Drake and Robin, that’s it, _all_ their identities will follow.

Option two, well, Stephanie _hates_ option two, but she can see the merits. It fits a narrative. Tim’s Dad. Bart. Connor. Even her own injury. No one would question a suicide after that much loss. No one would look deeper.

Bruce and Damian have made the same assessment, but no one wants to voice it.

“You know he asked me to be Robin, right?” Stephanie starts. “Before he started. It was back when Dami was gone. He had this whole speech, but it broke down to Batman needs a Robin and Gotham needs Batman.”

“Robin,” Damian spits. “Will _never happen again._ I will not allow it.”

“But he would have wanted _Batman_ to survive,” Stephanie says. “We all know it’s true. Hell, we all know which one of these options _Tim_ would pick and it’s _not_ the one where we all wind up exposed.”

She waits, hopes, yearns for a counterargument.

But no one says a word.

* * *

Stephanie winds up in a rehab clinic as she relearns her body. Mom’s there a lot, guilty that she hadn’t been able to afford the retrofits that would have let her recover at home. When Mom’s not around, Damian and Jon make rounds like they’ve appointed themselves her protectors.

But Spoiler has never needed protection. Not from her Dad, not from anyone.

After a few trips watching her glower intensify, Damian seems to catch a hint. He smuggles one of Tim’s old bo staffs into the facility and runs her through simple moves, modified for her new position.

It does more for her mood than all of the therapy she sits through.

The physical therapist, at least, is beyond pleased with her progress, telling her she’s been a model patient, that he’s impressed with her upper body strength.

“Boxer,” Stephanie says with a wry grin and tries not to think about Zorillo.

The therapist's face clouds.

“It’s fine,” Stephanie rushes to explain. “I’d stopped before this happened. Started nursing school and they were big on the dangers of concussions.”

“Didn’t imagine you as a boxer,” the therapist says. “But I don’t think I’m surprised.”

Which sounds about right. For all that Stephanie is a pretty, clear-eyed, smiling blond, she’s also _angry._ Since before Dad, before she could _remember_ she’s had that seething anger in her. The need to do something, anything, to make it better.

* * *

Batman buys her an apartment.

Intellectually, Stephanie knows that he has a stupid, gaudy, amount of money. That buying her a ground floor apartment in a redeveloping street within walking—wheeling—distance of Gotham University is the equivalent of Stephanie treating herself to a pair of new shoes. It’s how he communicates, Stephanie reasons. Instead of verbal affection, Bruce throws money at the problem. It’s…

Infuriating.

But it makes Mom sag in relief. It gives Stephanie her own space, free from memories of her old life and the rickety fire escape that she used to sneak out most nights. Hell, it even solves a lot of her transportation issues.

The place is ADA compliant, grab bars in the bathroom, lower counters in the kitchen.

And okay, Stephanie loves it. The open spaces, the wide doorways. It’s perfect.

She’d let the Bats pay for her hospital stay because it’s not special treatment. Pretty much anytime there is a supervillain related injuries to a civilian, the Wayne Foundation makes well-timed donations to area hospitals. Plus, the WayneTech prototype wheelchair she’d had delivered is infinitely better than the hospital loaners.

But the rest of it?

“So what? Is this the post-Robin retirement plan?”

Beside her, Damian gives a slow blink, which is as close as he gets to a full-body flinch.

It’s Damian here, not Batman. Because Bruce is too much of a goddam _coward_ to look Stephanie in the eyes these days.

“I’m sure father would feed you some drivel about this being what Drake would have wanted him to do.”

Stephanie snorts. “Tim knew me better than that. So do you. So does _Bruce_.”

“Then perhaps you should consider it an investment.”

Her brow pinches in confusion. In terms of investments, Stephanie’s injury effectively took her out of the vigilante game.

But… she doesn’t have a ton of options. And she’s past ready to leave the rehab facility.

“I don’t have the money to pay him back,” Stephanie says.

Damian gives a non-committal _–tt-_ .   

* * *

Investment.

Stephanie should have figured that one out.

“Help him!” Jon shouts.

“He should be in a fucking hospital!” Stephanie shouts back.

She’s only just reached the point in the semester where they’re letting her touch _people_ in her practicals. And that’s for stuff like taking blood pressure. She’s not even up to changing IVs yet.

“I can’t got to a hospital,” Damian says like he’s not being carried bridal style by a near frantic Flamebird and bleeding all over Stephanie’s floors.

“Fine then,” Stephanie says, “go ahead and bleed out.”

“I’m hardly in danger of bleeding out,” Damian spits and then ruins the bravado by passing out.

“I can cauterize the wound,” Jon says, looking panicked. There’s a slowly building red light behind his eyes.

“Oh my God,” Stephanie shouts. “What is wrong with you? Definitely do not do that. That’s a last resort.”

The red glow dims in his eyes.

Stephanie says, “Look, he should be in a hospital. You realize that even when I graduate this program, I won’t be qualified to give stitches.”

“He made me promise.” Jon lays Damian down on the floor. Stephanie will have to thank him later for him not ruining her brand new couch. “Can you help him or not?”

He definitely needs stitches. Probably a blood transfusion.

“Did you x-ray him?” she asks. “This hasn’t, like, punctured his liver, right?”

Jon nods several times in rapid succession and stares hard at Damian. “Nothing punctured. Just a lot of blood.”

“Okay,” Stephanie says. She doesn’t say she can do it.

But it’s not like there are any other options.

* * *

She hears about Jason Todd through the newspapers.

Because of course she does. God forbid anyone in this fucking family decide to talk to her. She calls Damian whose annoyance bleeds through the phone when he admits that he didn’t hear about Jason for several weeks either.

But so long as Damian and on one memorable occasion Bruce keep showing up wounded to her apartment, she refuses to be kept out of the loop. .

Jason is a scrawny twelve-year-old with a hungry look in his dark blue eyes. He’s skittish, quick to anger, and Stephanie is completely and totally in love with the kid after their first two minute conversation.

More than that, she’s sure of two things:

The first is that Jason Todd is absolutely one hundred percent Robin material and both Damian and Bruce must realize it. Because from minute one, both Damian and Bruce are adamant that it will never happen.

And it’s sweet, honestly the only time Stephanie’s ever see the two of the put on a united front outside of a legitimate fight for their lives. Or it would be if Stephanie wasn’t one hundred percent sure of a second fact:

Much like Stephanie, there’s no way in _hell_ they’re keeping him off the streets.

She suspects that he already has a bag of dirty tricks, but she wishes she could do what Damian had done for her, point him at a gym that would help smooth out those edges, that would give him not just the confidence, but the _skill_ he’d need to become a mask.

But she can’t give him any of that.

Instead she leaves him her phone number and hopes that he takes her up on the offer of a sympathetic ear.

* * *

Stephanie does her first surgery with a woefully understocked first aid kit and Batman in full costume unconscious in her bathroom.

She has too google how to do the trickiest maneuver, and mimic the video as Batman tries to die on her. One of these days she’ll to drive it through everyone’s skulls that nursing student is a far cry from trauma surgeon.

But Batman doesn’t die, so yeah, despite the need to clean blood out of her shower, it’s probably a win.

* * *

It’s not the first time Jason has freaked out in Stephanie’s apartment. The first time had been when Bruce found out that Jason wasn’t vaccinated and shown up at Stephanie’s with a pad full of syringes. Jason looked ready to cry through the whole ordeal and Stephanie suspects that the only reason he didn’t was that Stephanie threatened to record the whole thing and send it to Damian.

He’s a different kind of panicked today, his eyes wide and unblinking, his breath in short spurts.

“The adoption went through.” Jason pushes through the door and collapses onto Stephanie’s couch. “I think I’m freaking out.”

Stephanie wheels over. He’s not bleeding, which is, unfortunately, a rarity for people in Stephanie’s apartment. These days her first aid kit is better stocked than most EMTs. “Why are you panicking? You knew this was coming.”

He sits up sharply, one hand on the arm of the couch and stammers, “My name is Jason _Wayne_ now.”

“Congratulations,” she says. “Must feel good to ditch your Dad’s name.”

Stephanie has thought about it herself. Because Arthur Brown is a bad guy by every definition of the word. But Mom is still a Brown. And no matter how much she hates her dad, he played a huge role in shaping her life.

“Oh my God.” Jason’s blue eyes grow wider. “Bruce is officially my _Dad_.”

Stephanie rolls her eyes. “You’ve literally been calling him Dad since I met you.”

“Steph!”

“You could do better,” she teases.

Which makes him bristle.

Jason’s not shy about emotions. He’s never angry, just skips straight to furious. Never just anxious, but rather working himself into a full-bown panic. And he doesn’t just like, he _loves_.

And he’d loved Bruce immediately. In a way that Damian, Tim and Stephanie never quite had. Damian’s introduction had been tinged with expectations, Tim’s with hero worship, and Stephanie genuine annoyance. She lets him rant to her about how awesome Bruce is. He’s not even talking about Batman.

Stephanie has… issues with Bruce. From Tim’s death, to the fact that well placed funds are more effective than a guy in a bat suit. She’d bristled at his orders. She’d scoffed at the bat-branding.

But Bruce Wayne had taken one look at the underfed punk trying to jack his tires and thought, _I’m taking this one home._

Stephanie _gets_ why Jason loves Bruce.

She also understands, that there will be times when Bruce will drive him up the wall. “If you ever need to freak out, don’t do shit like run away. Come here, okay? If we decide you need to flee the country, I can probably hook you up. Just come here first.”

Jason fixes her with a long stare and it takes longer than it should for things to click.

He’s already taking her advice.

* * *

When Robin makes his reappearance, he’s wearing Stephanie’s old mask, one of Damian’s hand-me-down hoodies and carrying one of Tim’s spare bo staffs. She watches the recording of the fight through the feed in Bruce’s cowl and…

Somehow he doesn’t look like any of them. Sure there’s that superficial similarity with Damian and Tim and his loose movements are way more Stephanie’s style than any of the others, but mostly he looks like himself.

* * *

She’s already in the hospital when Jason is admitted with a GSW. She has to excuse herself from her clinical to dig for her phone to text Damian. Damian responds almost instantly with a location and Stephanie wheels herself two blocks over she finds Nightwing—still in costume—covered in blood.

His face is blank in a way that screams dissociation.

“Don’t worry,” he says, following her gaze to the blood. “It’s Robin’s.”

“What the actual _fuck_ happened?” Stephanie demands.

But Damian doesn’t seem to hear. “I was in time, wasn’t I? I got him there in time?”

Behind him is a pile of equipment and Stephanie realizes with a shiver that Damian had stripped the armor from Jason’s bare bones costume before delivering him to the hospital. And that kind of delay…

“I don’t know,” Stephanie admits.

Damian nods once, very sharply.

“What happened?” Stephanie asks. She reaches out a hand to squeeze his, ignoring the blood.

“Red Hood happened,” Damian answers.

* * *

Stephanie’s heard of Red Hood, of course. Hard not to when he introduce himself with a round of bombings that took out half the corrupt politicians in Gotham and scared another quarter into resigning. She knows that Damian and Bruce have been unusually interested in this case.

She hadn’t known why.

Batman decrees Jason stay with her during his recovery. She suspects the only reason Jon isn’t assigned as a babysitter is her impending nursing degree. Not that she minds. Jason’s bitter about being sidelined, but Jason also had to get an artery in his leg sewn back together so he doesn’t get a vote.

“It’s Tim, you know,” he comments.

“What?”

“Red Hood is Tim Drake,” Jason says.

“It’s not Tim,” Stephanie says. The first time Jason pitched the theory, she sent him Tim’s autopsy report. The one that detailed exactly how dead he was. Emphatically dead. _Tortured_ before the final event.

“I’ve seen pictures,” Jason says. “Blood loss doesn’t make you hallucinate. It’s either Tim Drake or his identical twin.”

“It can’t be,” Stephanie protests.

* * *

The mess with Red Hood ends when the Joker is found dead in his Arkham cell.

Jason heads back to the manor. Bruce starts obsessively looking for a reason for Joker’s murder. Damian and Jon retreat back to Bludhaven.

Stephanie, after weeks of radio silence from Batman, gets an autopsy report.

She almost doesn’t look at it. Joker’s dead and it was Joker’s fault that Tim died. There’s pretty large part of her that would consider Joker’s hypothetical murder a civic service.

Curiosity gets the better of her.

She’s not a medical examiner and she wasn’t on scene for the autopsy, but after a few hours of scrutiny, she doesn’t see anything that suggests this is murder not natural causes. Heart failure. Entirely unsurprising considering the Joker’s history of toxic chemical exposure.

Stephanie doesn’t buy it. Red Hood’s been quiet since the death and that’s too much coincidence, too much _luck_.

But unlike Batman, she knows when to let things go.

* * *

Mom makes sure Stephanie takes care of herself. She comes to Stephanie’s apartment weekly with a home cooked meal, and a nurse’s eye for health care. She quizzes Stephanie on potential pressure sores from the chair, runs through her physical therapy for the day and tries to discretely check on her mental health.

Stephanie, for her part, has been trying not to think about the fallout from her injury. Unfortunately, this occasionally means she forgets she needs to transfer into her chair before a middle of the night bathroom trip and winds up sprawled out on the floor.

Mom always seems able to match the bruises to their cause, but she never comments. Instead, she helps rearrange the floorplan so her chair has easier access, chatting all the while about the patients she’s dealt with on night shift.

Just once, Mom runs into Bruce on her way out and the two of them spend almost a full minute glaring at each other. She’s not sure who wins, but she’s super glad it wasn’t directed at her.

Mom gets along best with Damian of all people. They have the same soft spot for pulpy science fiction novels and good tea. Jason’s skittish around new people, but confides in her that Stephanie’s mom reminds him of his own.

Mom would have liked Tim, too, Stephanie thinks.

Of course, Stephanie’s not one hundred percent sure _she_ likes Tim right now. It took her a while to get a picture of Red Hood without a helmet, but even that level of paranoid screamed Tim. When she did get a look at the pictures, well, there wasn’t really any doubt.

Tim Drake is Red Hood.

Tim Drake murdered two dozen politicians and who knows how many others.

Tim Drake tried to kill Jason for daring to talk to him.

And, well, Stephanie is good at grudges. From the girl who pushed her at recess in second grade ( _Larissa McKay,_ the jerk) to the high school teacher who’d tried to send her home for her attire, to her Dad who’d steamrolled her sense of security and _Bruce_ who’d looked at her homemade Spoiler costume and said _you shouldn’t be out here._

Tim has killed dozens. He tried to kill Jason and almost succeeded. He… came back from the dead and didn’t even bother to say hi to Stephanie.

She tells this all to her Mom one night when her back is screaming at her and her legs are stubbornly silent. Mom runs a hand through her hair.

“Jason says he wants to try talking to Tim again,” Stephanie confides. “I told him he was insane.”

But it’s not just Jason. Bruce gets up with a far-away look in his eyes whenever Tim is mentioned. She saw a couple legitimate tears from Alfred. Damian had taken her aside and apologized for not killing the Joker as a retribution for his crimes against Stephanie. It took everything Stephanie had not to point a finger in response and shout _Oh my God,_ you _killed him!_

“You don’t think he should be forgiven,” Mom observes.

It’s… more complicated than that. Damian had explained the Lazarus Pit and even without monster juice fueling his resurrection, Stephanie is painfully aware of how trauma can change a person.

“I just,” Stephanie licks her lips. “I want to see him. I’m pretty sure I’m going to kick the shit out of him when I do, but I want to see him.”

“Well.” Mom glances over at her wheelchair. “Maybe not _kick_. But the rest of it seems reasonable.”

It takes her a second to catch up to the joke and when she does they both sputter laughter into the night.

* * *

Middle of the night crash. Stephanie blinks herself awake and glances to her bedside where the security monitor tells her the alarm has been disabled. She carefully pulls herself up and transfers into her chair, trying to shake the fog of sleep. Middle of the night visit inevitably means vigilante here for medical treatment. She rolls out of the bedroom, already complaining, “I swear to god, I’m going to have to start charging you Bats.”

She cuts off when she sees a figure slumped in front of her window, bloodied hand pressed around a stomach wound. A second later, she registers the red helmet.

“Tim?” she asks.

“Spoiler,” he says. “I could use a hand.”

“You bastard!” she shouts. “You really think I’d help you after what you did to Jason?”

He reaches up, flips a catch on his helmet and tugs it off with one hand, the other still pressed against the wound.

It’s him.

Older, sure, but with the same delicate features, the ice blue eyes, the stupid haircut that always managed to look greasy after a night on patrol. He gives her a tight smile. On anyone else she’d call it fake, but the fucking weirdo always smiled like that, like he learned how from descriptions he’d read in a book. “Yeah,” he says. “I think you’ll help me.”

“Goddammit,” Stephanie says and grabs the first aid kit.

* * *

She’s in the two week break between summer semesters when she gets the call about a break in at her gym. She tells the caller from the security place that he has the wrong number. That would have been the end of it except he rattles off a familiar address.

Stephanie hasn’t been to the third street gym since Zorillo died. By the time she had been mentally ready for it, her injury made it a moot point. She calls Jon for back-up and heads outside to get to the right bus stop.

Jon’s waiting when she gets there, his thumbs hooked through his belt loops, his thick framed glasses catching the light of the street lamps. He’s wearing a red flannel that would look more in place on a farm than in Gotham.

“We expecting trouble?” he asks, playing up the drawl in his voice.

“Fuck if I know,” Stephanie answers, rolling towards the gym.

The door’s unlocked but it doesn’t look forced. She nods to Jon who does a quick run through and reports it’s clear. Stephanie pushes herself inside.

The place hasn’t changed much since the last time she was here. It looks like a few of the heavy bags were replaced, but otherwise it’s the same bare-boned setup with the same center ring. Still in business, at least.

“You okay?” Jon asks.

“Honestly?” Stephanie blinks hard. “Yeah. I’m psyched there are no bodies. I love this place.”

Jon still looks worried as Stephanie wheels herself over to one of the heavy bags and gives it a few hard hits.

“Doesn’t look like anyone took anything,” Jon muses. “I mean, not that there’s a ton of stuf to take.”

Stephanie leaves the heavy bag swinging and moves toward the office. She isn’t sure who’s been running the place so she grabs the stack of papers from the desk hoping for a sign.

She gets it almost immediately.

Jon pokes his head in “Steph?”

She grabs the bag from the back of her chair and shoves the papers inside. “Let’s go.”

“You sure,” Jon asks.

“Thanks for coming,” Stephanie says. “False alarm. Sorry for making you come all the way out here.”

“It’s not that far when you can fly.” Jon pats her once on the shoulder. “And you know it’s not a problem right? You may as well be my little sister.”

“Damian’s little sister,” Stephanie counters before she can stop herself.

Jon gets a dreamy little smile on his face. “Same difference.”

God, _this family_.

“I’m going to catch the bus home.”

“If you’re sure you’re okay, I should be getting back to Bludhaven.” Jon shoves his hands in his pocket. “If you need anything, let me know.”

He walks her to the bus stop and Stephanie knows he’ll be gone as soon as the bus is out of sight. She pushes herself up the ramp and flips up the handicapped seats to make room for her chair.

A second later someone slides into the seat across from her.

Tim Drake looks healthier than he had when he was trying to bleed out on her floor. It makes it easier to pick out the differences between him and the boy she used to know. The way his shoulders have filled out. The new scars on his face. The hap-hazard beginnings of a five-o’clock shadow.

“Should I call Jon back?” she asks.

Tim shrugs. “Probably.”

She doesn’t move.

“You find my present?”

The deed to the gym is in her backpack. Drake Industries had owned the property. As of yesterday it had been transferred to Stephanie. “Would have thought the whole legally dead thing would keep you out of property management.”

Tim scoffs. “Bribery.”

“Also thought one of your platforms was anti-bribery,” Stephanie counters, thinking of Red Hood’s introduction into Gotham. The one that started with dozens of concerted explosions.

“Steph…”

“What the fuck do you want from me, Drake?”

“I love that place, too, you know.” Tim lounges back, taking up three seats on the mostly empty bus. “Or at least I used to. Saw it was up for sale. Figured it was better you take over than watch it go to one of the gangs.”

“And let me guess, I’ll owe you one.”

“I don’t need you in my debt,” Tim says. “You patched me up a few weeks ago. Didn’t call Batman. Didn’t even call Flamebird.”

“A mistake,” Stephanie snaps.

“Nostalgia,” Tim answers. “We were great, you know. Robin and Batgirl.”

“ _Spoiler_ ,” Stephanie corrects.

“Right. I forgot.” Tim smiles. “Look at us now.”

“Fuck you, you sociopathic lunatic,” Stephanie says. “I’m _fine_.”

The smile stretches wider. Like she just said exactly what he wanted to hear. “That’s why I always liked you, Steph. You tell it how it is. Make sure the rest of them remember that, too.”

* * *

She goes back to the gym, though. The fights stop when she rolls in.

Then she’s getting hugs, slaps on the back, suggestions about taking up wheelchair boxing. They’ve all heard rumors about the sale and have the impression that she lobbied the Wayne foundation to buy the place. She doesn’t do anything to dissuade the notion.

“What happened to you?” one of the lanky kids she recognizes from one of the take-him-down-a-notch bouts Zorillo used to assign her. He’s blatantly gaping at her chair.

“Nursing school,” she answers and when the kid busts out in surprised laughter, she feels like she’s won something. The curiosity isn’t malicious. They all know people who’ve been shot and most of the survivors are all too willing to tell the story.

“Google it, cabrón,” one of the others tells the first, cuffing him on the back on the head. He turns to Stephanie. “You staying today?”

And she looks around at the faces, some of them old sparring partners, others just curious. A knot loosens in her stomach. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m staying.”

She watches fights all afternoon, gives a few pointers and a neat black row of stitches. She even has a go at one of the speed bags, the profile significantly lower than all the other ones in the gym. Like it was waiting for her.

* * *

She graduates with an associate’s degree in nursing. Which, as she’s starting to understand, is nowhere near enough expertise for the amount of work vigilantes keep dumping into her lap. She gets a job at the hospital in Gotham, but starts researching nurse practitioner programs on the side. Damian keeps sending her links to medical school. There’s a part of her that’s slowly warming to the idea, but there’s also a part that recognizes medical school will suck up all of her time. And she wants to keep doing things like this.

There are eleven girls in the gym, all between the ages of nine and fifteen. They stand in a loose row wearing mostly hand-me-down workout clothes. They’ve laid down extra mats for the class but none of them seem willing to take the first step onto them.

Jason stands in front of the group. He’s in the middle of one of his growth spurts and despite the Robin training he’s gawky and slight, like his body, after so many years of malnutrition had to pick between bulk and height. He’s by far the least intimidating person she considered tapping for this.

The girls eye him with apprehension, waiting for instruction, but Jason cants his head to Stephanie. “Don’t look at me, I’m just a prop for demos. Steph here’s the boss.”

Self-defense class. Step one. She clears her throat, nervous in a way she never was in the field. “First thing, we learn how to fall.”

The littlest girl’s eyes widen like she wasn’t expecting that. Like she’d come here to learn how to never fall down again.

Stephanie continues, “Everyone falls. You can’t help it. But if you learn how to do it right, the next part, the more important part, gets much easier.”

Jason, who’s slipped to the row of students as if he’s part of the class, affects a falsetto and calls, “What’s that, Ms. Stephanie?”

She wheels herself onto the mats and answers, “Getting back up.”

She sets her face and topples her chair sideways.

Then she shows them how it’s done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand that's it.  
> Steph's was actually the last story I had planned out for this verse, so I'm marking the series as complete. If anyone else wants to write in this verse they're more than welcome. 
> 
> If you want to say hi outside of ao3, I'm on tumblr @last01standing and I run a blog that skews towards original stuff: pkgwrites.wordpress.com .


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